arteitle wrote:I find it fascinating that despite the long-time difference of the US and Japan using NTSC while much of Europe used PAL, the abundance of NTSC material has made it so better European TVs include support for NTSC natively. Very interesting. What's next, will Europeans start putting 120 volt outlets in their homes too?

Aaron T.

Main reason is that its a very simple thing to do. NTSC has less lines than PAL and changing the colour carrier is simple processing.

120v outlets would be good for you USers visiting us, but it would end up being less useful, although slightly safer. :-) (Thus the reason no outlets in UK bathrooms).

(The useless stuff you learn when your friend emigrates to the USA! )

Another UKer, started watching back late in 1994. Wow 10 years already...

Calhoun07 wrote:It's due to copy protection on the discs. Not all DVDs are created equal, so it's possible to play a hundred DVDs and not have the same problem, but when you run your DVD player thru your VCR, you will run the risk of getting DVDs with copy protection that detect the VCR, and it sends a singal back to the DVD player and tells it that you're trying to copy something on to VHS tape, and will either scramble the singal or turn the image black and white. I knew from the instant I read your first post, that was what the problem was. It's quite common, actually. I work part time in a video store and I guarantee you every person who brings back DVDs claiming they were "defective" due to picture image problems like that (I even had customers bring them back saying the DVD played black and white), every one of them had the DVD player hooked up thru the VCR and easilly fixed their delimma by hooking it up thru the TV. But like I said, not all DVDs are encoded with the same kind of copy protection, DVD companies may use various types of copy protection to thwart bootleggers, but from time to time you will find some that don't like your VCR. Just a word to the wise if anybody has any future problems with any other DVDs.

I'm pretty sure that can't be the case here. The My So-Called Life DVDs don't seem to have any copyright protection.

The reason I noticed this is that I have an old TV that only has cable input and no component inputs (the three jacks: yellow (video), red, and white (L and R audio signal)). This means that I need an RF modulator to take the output from my DVD player and convert it to a cable output for my TV. Well, a thunderstorm had fried my RF modulator (thankfully leaving DVD player and TV intact), so I was unable to hook my player directly to the TV. As someone said in another post, Macrovision (and color striping, etc.) means putting the DVD output to the VCR (which has component input and cable output) then to the TV gives you a distorted picture.

Before I got around to getting a new RF modulator, I hooked up my DVD player through the VCR to the TV to see which discs would work. All the My So-Called Life discs worked (and for anyone interested Mad About You also worked). A friend explained that some niche products don't have copyright/copying protection because it costs the company extra to add it, so on products where limited sales are expected, they don't bother.

Long story short, you can make VCR copies of all the discs (for you personal viewing pleasure of course) without distortion.

Just a note: Some VCR's are 'smart' enough to let the dvd signal through to the TV until you hit the 'record' button. Mine is like that, and plays dvds fine, but as soon as you hit record, the picture fades in and out, and gets fuzzy.

There are boxes that are used to color correct video signals that strip the macrovision out of the signal. I have a few VHS tapes of good DVD movies with the fun directors commentary on them. (My brother is majoring in Video, and has cool toys.)

"Your imagination, like a child, will explode with unrestrained possibilities for adventure."

I can't believe it but my DVD-player (Samsung DVD 611) refuses to play the first DVD. Not even the old one from before the set. I have both but neither will play. The other volumes will. I donno what can be wrong with the player. It has worked fine before. We have another player in our PC and that one plays anything.